


Bad and Free

by KellerProcess



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Drug Use, I can't help it, I can't write australian accents, I'll put lots of warnings on that chapter though so don't worry, Lots of OCs - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Stripping, Toilet humor, alcohol use, everybody cusses, gunfucking, it isn't coming for a while either but just an fyi first, it's okei I'm American, misuse of Gorillaz music, more tags to come as they do, no non-con/rape happens but there is an attempted sexual assault, not sure how to tag this one, post-apocalyptic sex and demolition work, they sound like texans probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-12 17:48:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7116145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KellerProcess/pseuds/KellerProcess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamison Fawkes is a Junkertown sewage worker with big dreams of becoming the city-state’s lead demolitionist. Mako Rutledge is an ex-bounty hunter and the owner of The Bouncing Betty, a strip club and the key to Jamison’s ambitions. Now if Jamison can only get close enough to Junkertown’s leader, the People Eater, to make his dreams a reality….</p><p>Overwatch AU meets Mad Max: Fury Road AU in which I just want an excuse to rub four gorgeous—well, gorgeous for some of us, anyway—guys together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ravenousgrue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenousgrue/gifts), [ahimsabitches](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/gifts).



Vries Simpson’s left eye didn’t used to twitch like that, but in the two years Jamison Fawkes has been working for him, his boss has developed a rather nasty tic indeed. Which only shows up when Vrises’s least favorite sewer-line dogsbody has done something “fucking stupid” again.

Jamie takes that as both an accomplishment and proof of his mad skills.

Vries’s eyelid flutters as he sucks in a breath, blows it out. Suck. Blow. Suck. Blow. Suck. Blow.

Jamie titters at his silent word choice.

“I’m really glad you think this is funny,” Vrise snaps.

That only makes Jamie lose it completely. He doubles over in that loud, high-pitched cackle that Celia calls “huffing helium” while his boss just looks on in painful displeasure.  
It almost makes Jamie feel bad for him.

Well, no. Not really.

“Yeah,” he admits when he calms down, “I thought it was pretty good as shits and giggles go.”

The last four words come out all in a rush and he doubles over again, huffing helium so hard he can barely breathe. “G-get it?” he stammers. “_Shits_ and—?”  
Vries bangs his big hands down on his desk, teeth gritted so hard Jamie’s pretty sure he’s cracking his back molars.

“Goddamn it, Jamie! You blew up a public toilet! What the hell am I even supposed to do with that?”  
 _Sack me. Please sack me_ , Jamie thinks as he launches himself into another laughing fit. “Aw, c’mon, mate. That crapper was clogged more often than not. I just put it out of its misery by sending it to the great shithouse in the sky. I did you a favor, if you think about it.”

_Sack me, you stupid bastard._

The twitch returns, only now it looks more like images flashing through a zoetrope, or whatever the name of that toy is Bates showed him last week. Or like a strobe light—if eyes could be strobe lights.

That’s actually an interesting idea.

Vries huffs out a sigh and sinks back into the creaky metal chair behind his battered desk. “Fawkes,” he says.

“Mhh?”

“I’ve been putting up with your shit for two years—” 

Jamie stops giggling when Vries shoots him that death glare. 

_Oooooh. I’ve done it now._

“Coming in to work late, pissed, stoned, woozy on guzzoline—”

“I only inhaled once.”

“Half-assing your way through the job, distracting other workers,” Vries goes on as if he hadn’t interrupted. “Blowing things up when it suits your fancy.”

“Aw, now, you can’t blame me for that, mate,” Jamie drawls, leaning back in his seat. “You can’t tell me it’s every little child’s dream to grow up and be a shit worker—”

“Sanitation worker!”

“Crikey, all right. So it was _your_ dream,” Jamie concedes. “But not normal people’s. Well, not that anyone in the Wasteland isn’t whacka, mind you. But that’s beside the point.”

“I don’t care if it’s your dream or not, Fawkes. You—” 

“Oh suck my tits,” Jamie snaps, sliding forward in the uncomfortable chair he’s been sitting in for this little shouty tete-a-tete. It’s tiny and has got a little paddle-shaped doohickey that cuts around half of it and makes it even harder to fit into. “Monday through Saturday, I wriggle around in rusty, shit pipes, fixing shit, cleaning shit, scraping shit out of shit. A body’s got to do somethin’ to stay sane down in the sewers,” he appeals. “Can’t blame me if I get a li’l twitchy.”

Vries seems lost for words.

Maybe the angry red heat in his face is cooking his brains.

“What?” Jamie asks, making sure his tone is all sincere-like. “You’d rather I write poetry on the walls? Draw pretty pictures on the cleaning carts? Explosions are an art form, boss! Resplendent as fireworks and ephemeral as perfume, they are. Ohh.” He claps a hand over his mouth—the flesh hand. He doesn’t even want to think about the prosthetic one until he can disinfect it—that cherry bomb couldn’t place itself in the clogged shitter, after all. 

“Hooly dooly,” he whispers. “I’ve twigged it now! You’re a boor, mate. Nobody ever gave you a proper education in the arts, you see. Naturally, you couldn’t understand—”

“Get out.”

_Ace! Here it comes._

“No, I’m serious,” Jamie presses on, because it never hurts to have a little insurance. “It ain’t ever too late to learn these things. Now, if I could teach you—”

“Get. Out!” Vries punctuates the scream further by tossing a book at Jamie’s head. 

_Probably sanitation regulations_ , Jamie thinks as he hauls himself out of the table, nearly banging his hip on the weird piece of wood. _Bloke probably don’t read anything but._

“Okay, okay, mate,” he says, holding his hands aloft. “No need to shout. I’ll just come back tomorrow an—”

Vries jabs a fat finger at the door to his office. “Don’t bother,” he growls. “Clean out your locker and hand in your tools! We’re done here.”

_Thank fuck._

“Don’t mind if I do!” Jamie gives him a toothy grin and shoves his flesh hand out. “Pleasure workin’ with ya, mate. Or not, no. Not really,” he says, drawing back his hand and folding all but two fingers back, which he thrusts up into the air. 

The twitch returns for a third act. “You’ll be lucky if Kalashnikov himself doesn’t pitch you out on your arse by week’s end,” Vries sneers. “If you don’t work in Junkertown, you don’t live in Junkertown, you shit-eating little anarchist.”

“‘Shit-eating’? You know, I really can’t even think of a comeback,” Jamie says as he turns and opens the door. “In this profession, the jokes really do just write themselves. Toodle-oo, mate.” 

Another book barely misses his head as he shuts the door on what is now, thankfully, his past.

Ahh, freedom! It tastes exactly like smoke.

Incendiary.


	2. Chapter 2

The Bouncing Betty is probably a terrible name for an all-male strip club. 

Roadhog think that every morning. In fact, it’s usually his first thought as he heaves himself up off the saggy mattress and into his fuzzy pig-head slippers. And just as usually, that thought is followed by a damn good justification—basically, you don’t name things when you’re drunk on Bartertown ’shine. And for that matter, you probably shouldn’t buy things either. Especially things that cost the tidy sum you packed away assassinating and body-guarding and just plain robbing and stealing your way across this burned-out continent. When he’d finally sobered up what felt like a year later—but was actually probably more like thirty-six hours—Roadhog had found himself the new owner of a newly (mis)named club filled with confused employees, a ledger so far in the red it might as well have been mahogany, and a former owner who’d skipped town while the skipping was good and his pockets were full.

He’d had no choice, really, but to try to make it work. 

Being a farmer before you were a mercenary means two things—first, you’re really good at shit like getting up early, working hard, and keeping detailed records of everything, including things like expenses and payroll; second, you know how to stretch a dollar—or in this case, a copper—until it screams for the police. Eight years later, he’s not only made the club work, but made it one of the best ones in Junkertown.

But Roadhog doesn’t think about that today as he shuffles into the tiny but serviceable bathroom to get ready for another long day.

He thinks about auditioning for a new dancer and what a pain in the ass that’s going to be. But Charlie had an out—an honest-to-God opportunity to get the hell out of Australia for the States, which for all their numerous faults weren’t an irradiated hellscape patchworked over with lawless little towns and an occasional metropolis like Junkertown.   
But the Betty needs a core complement of fourteen dancers to keep things interesting. He’s found that out through not only trial and error but actual statistics—yeah, he’d been serious about that making-it-work thing. So thirteen isn’t a lucky number, and a-hiring he will go. 

Only, by the time he makes it downstairs into the club from the cluster of apartments on the top floor, his day has hit a small complication in the form of the man sitting at the bar. Prickly as a saguaro and sharp as a tack, the major is draped in his usual bandoliers and bullet pouches with the bandolier wig—his symbol of office—perched on his head.   
He’s also well into his second glass of Dinki-Di Pale Ale.

Fuck, Kalashnikov has shit taste in beer.

“Major,” Roadhog says, adjusting the back strap of his mask before saluting. “What can I do for you?”

Not that he was any great shakes in the army as a lance corporal back when there was a military, but Kalashnikov apparently has some psychic power when it comes to telling that a person had military service.

Major Kalashnikov swings up onto his feet and returns the salute. “At ease, Lance Corporal.”

 _Seriously. How the fuck_ does _he know?_

Roadhog nods over at the bar. “Should’ve let me know you wanted a beer early. Kitchen and bar are actually not open for another four hours.”

Far be it from him to criticize Junkertown’s commander-in-chief for anything, of course. This is just Roadhog’s gentle way of saying he’s uncomfortable with people entering his locked establishment and going to town on his booze.

Kalashnikov chuckles and plops a hefty little pouch down on the bar top. From the way it jangles, it’s probably filled with more copper than his entire Dinki-Di supply is worth.  
Well. That’s all right, then.

“Sorry for bargin’ in unannounced,” the major drawls. “But I’m here on business that it’s best no one overhears.”

“Ah.” Roadhog nods and lumbers his way behind the bar. All five hundred and some odd pounds of him easily clear the little door that separates it from the rest of the club. Another addition he can thank the People Eater for. And speaking of him….

“He wants another private party, doesn’t he?” Roadhog asks as he takes down a mug and some Wild Turkey. _What the hell’s the point of being a bartender if you can’t have an Irish coffee in the morning?_

Roadhog doesn’t miss the fondness that briefly softens the hard planes of the major’s face, making him look a good ten years younger than somewhere in his forties. “Not every day someone turns fifty,” he says as Roadhog starts the coffeemaker. “I want to make it special for him.”

The jealousy that spikes through Roadhog’s chest only lasts a second, but it’s painful as hell all the same. 

A few months ago, Areta would’ve been forty-six. 

“He doesn’t know about this, does he?” he asks instead of dwelling.

Kalashnikov chuckles, showing off a ruin of a mouth, all twisted teeth and bullets where a few should be. “Man says he doesn’t like surprises, but that ain’t true. He just don’t like the bad ones. Two weeks from today. That give you enough time?”

“Would’ve appreciated at least three,” Roadhog rumbles as the coffee starts to perk. Hell, if Kalashnikov doesn’t want honest answers, he shouldn’t ask stupid questions, now should he?

“I know.” Kalashnikov says with a nod. “Sorry, Hog.”

And hell if that apologetic little look doesn’t just wash his annoyance away. It’s kind of a pity the People Eater and the major were already as tight as they could get when they founded this place twenty years ago. 

“Tuesday night work for you?” he asks. “Best night to close the place down for a reservation.”

“Mh-hm. Just so happens Wednesday’s his big five-oh.” Kalashnikov leans over the bar and offers a hand that’s as long, lean, and gnarled as the rest of him. Kalashnikov’s not a tiny man by any means, but Roadhog still can’t help but feel he’s shaking a doll’s hand when he wraps his paw around it.

“You’ll pay the twenty percent rush fee on this party, of course. Okay, fifteen percent?” he asks when the major frowns.

“Fuk-ushima,” Kalashnikov grumbles. “After all we’ve done for you.” But there’s a playful hint in it. “Yeah, that’ll be taken care of. The People Eater honors his debts, and so do I.” He glances over to the rapidly-filling coffeepot. “Say, brother…any chance a superior officer could get some of that for the road?”

Rolling his eyes, Mako fetches down another mug. “I don’t do to-go cups.”

Kalashnikov shrugs as he plunks down on a stool again. “Good thing I don’t take alcohol to go, then.”

Roadhog snorts a laugh as he fetches the pot and turns to make their drinks.

“So what else is new?” he asks Kalashnikov as he slides his drink over. “We still at war with the Citadel and the rest of the Triumvirate?”

“We’re always at war with the Citadel and the rest of the Triumvirate,” Kalashnikov grumbles as he raises his mug in a mock toast. “Sons of bitches are like ants. And that’s all you need to know, Hog. Rest is classified intel.”

“I’m a bartender,” Roadhog reminds him. “Like a priest, only with a better liquor cabinet.”

“And no security clearance,” Kalashnikov says with a snort. 

“My lips are sealed.” To emphasize the point, Roadhog touches the stitched-up mouth of his porcine gas mask.

Kalashnikov sighs and runs a hand up under his headdress, through the thick, graying hair beneath. “Let’s just put it this way, mate. There’s more’n one reason I want to give him a good birthday.”

Roadhog puts the mug down so it won’t shatter when he clenches it. “Are we in danger?”

“What?” Kalashnikov stops massaging his scalp and looks at him. “No, no, nothin’ like that. Just had a few equipment losses on the front that’s got him down is all.”

Kalashnikov’s incapable of lying. Everyone in Junkertown knows it. But if that wasn’t the case, Roadhog isn’t so sure he’d believe him.

“Just promise me you’n your boys’ll help him forget all that, wont’cha? Just for a while.”

“Of course, sir,” Roadhog says as he raises his mask over his lips to take a sip of the first drink of the day.

_We’d all like to do some forgetting around here._


	3. Chapter 3

“Wow, you really fucked up this time,” Bates drawls as she leans against the wall of battered lockers. 

“I resent that,” Jamie says as he slams the door of what used to be his locker for the last time. He thought of putting a few cherry bombs in there to fuck it up but…nah. That’d blow up hers too, and then she’d be mad at him for real. He turns around and gives her a toothy grin. “This fuckup was completely engineered.”

“Mhm. And the others weren’t?” Naomi Bates is a spindly girl with dark brown skin, wide hair, and legs and arms that never seem to end, which her tank top and shorts seem to make even longer. When she plops down on the bench, crosses one bony knee over the other and stares at him with those big, brown eyes behind her wire glasses, Jamie feels like he’s being watched by a praying mantis.

An especially judgy praying mantis.

“Don’t start now,” he says, poking a jokey, metal finger at her. “Vrise and me were like water and gunpowder—can’t blame me for havin’ to go off before he made me all soggy and unusable.”

Bates sniffed in derision. “You know better than anyone that gunpowder doesn’t get ruined when it’s wet.”

“Shh,” Junkrat hisses, fluttering his metal hand at her. “You’re ruining the metaphor! Oi, don’t get off your bike,” he says when she folds her arms stiffly over her tiny chest and shoots him a scowl. “It’s for the best, darl.”

“It’s for the best that you’re now kicked out of the sani dorms and onto the streets, then? Fuck’s sake, Jamie!”   
Well, he didn’t exactly expect her to buy it, now did he? “You can always sneak me in to your room, can’t ya? Sure, Celia needs a bed all to herself, but you and me, love, we can get all cozy-like.”

She shoves him in the chest when he juts his head out and makes kissy noises. “Sod off.”

He does. Not like he was serious anyway; kissing Bates or Celia would be like kissing your sister. Worse. Like kissing your sister’s elbows.

Crikey, that was a weird segue even for him.

“It’s gonna be fine,” he reassures her. “Got another job lined up.”

“Oh? Doing what?”

Jamie wriggles his hips and hums some bump-and-grindy tune he vaguely remembers hearing at the Skin Market one time.

Bates blinks slowly, tilting her head. “You’re…taking up professional hula-hooping for idiots?”

“Ha-ha.”

“Exotic dancing?” 

“Ta-daaa,” Jamie trills, all jazz hands.

“No.” 

“Whaddya mean n—?”

“Just no.”

“Are you giving Bates a premature coronary, Jamie?” A very dirty, very shit-stained Celia asks, rounding the corner of the wall of lockers and interrupting a perfectly good pout as far as Jamie is concerned.

“Oh, you know me. Just doin’ the Lord’s work,” he drawls. 

“Hmm,” Celia says thoughtfully before turning to their mutual friend. “What’s he done now?” 

“Apparently, our Jamie’s had a busy day,” Bates says as she unspindles her limbs. She drums her booted toes against the floor, which means she’s annoyed, but not as much as she could be.

“Did you, now?” Celia shifts her entire body around to turn and look at him. There’s a smirk lighting up her blue eyes. “What happened?” she asks as she starts unfastening her overalls. 

“He blew up the toilet across the street from the Thunderdome.”

“That must mean it’s a Wednesday,” Celia says sagely, working at the second clasp. “An unusually ambitious Wednesday, however. Congratulations, Jamie.”

“Ta very much, darl.”

“And got himself sacked,” Bates presses on valiantly, as if trying to get her to see reason for God’s sake. 

“Really?” Celia’s soft jaw falls open in shock, then mirth. “Well, then, I don’t see why you’re so upset, Bates. I owe you twenty coppers.”

“Oh, fuck me. _Seriously_?” Jamie asks, rolling his eyes at Bates, who just sighs.

“Neither of you are thinking clearly about this,” she says, even as she holds her hand out for the money, which Celia promptly fetches from her locker before going back to undressing.

Jamie frowns. She’s moving awfully stiff today.

“Retrofitting’s a bitch, ain’t it?” he asks as he steps up behind her and holds out his flesh hand in a silent offer of help.

Celia nods on a groan, and Jamie tries to ignore the little detonation of guilt in his stomach. One less young, strong person on Celia’s team means more work for her. More work for her sore shoulders and stiff neck that won’t turn. 

“Get undressed, darl,” he says. “I’ll rub you down. That is,” he says with a glance over at Bates, “if her royal nibs here don’t object to givin’ me a leg to stand on?” He wriggles his metal leg, which is definitely not shower-friendly.

“You two are damn impossible,” Bates says as she gets up and pulls her tank top up over her head. Her tone says they’ll talk about this later, and really, so long as they can all get a shower in after a hard day’s work, Jamie’s not exactly opposed.

If someone had told him two years ago that one day he’d be in a shower with two beautiful women while giving one of them a one-handed neck rub without getting any tail, or even popping a chubby, he’d have laughed in their face before asking if they’d ever seen a naked woman. Especially one like Celia Mills. Five foot eight and well over two hundred eighty pounds with hips broader than about two of Jamie, he’d wanted her for all of five minutes—until, that is, he found out she thought he was adorable, but too young and too male for her tastes. He’d shrugged it off as a valiant strikeout and muddled on. Now it seemed strange that he’d ever been interested. Like that was some alternate-universe Jamie’s decision, one who’d wandered into his world and drunk all the good booze before pissing off back to his own timeline. Probably where he got head twenty-seven times a day and blew things up for a living.

Usually when he got to saying shit like that aloud, Celia would just pat his head and tell him that life made a lot more sense as soon as you turned thirty. Whatever that meant.   
Anyway, regularly seeing each other covered in brackish water, shit, and whatever the hell else lurked in Junkertown’s aging sewers would pretty much kill even the strongest of boners, regardless. But someone has to keep the city going, the aquifer functioning, the rainwater sorted. Thankless jobs and all that.

“Better?” he asks after a few minutes of kneading Celia’s neck, shoulders, and back.

“God, please,” Bates grunts from Junkrat’s right where she’s been standing hip to hip with him. “You weigh twice your looks.”

“Not my fault you’re made out of twine and piss, Bates.”

“A good deal better,” Celia says, tough they all know she has a better chance of becoming reigning Ostrarch of Junkertown than she has of her vertebra ever unlocking. Still, you poke a muscle enough and the damn thing releases for a little while. Jamie knows that from experience. “Thank you, Jamie.”

“No worries,” he says with a pat to her shoulder. “Roight, then. Thinking my liberation calls for a drink or twelve. The Hump, say?” 

This gets an enthusiastic hum from Celia, who’s a big fan of the bar’s microwbrews—made possible, as is everything in Junkertown, by garbage, gonzo, and by the letters _F_ and _U_ —and Bates, who can put away twice her weight in shine, even if she won’t admit it. 

When they both look at Bates, she sighs and turns off the water. “Fine,” she says. “But we’re still talking about this, Jamie.”

Well, and she wouldn’t be Bates if she dropped it that easy, now would she?

***

The Dry Hump is one of Junkertown’s better bars. One, because its name is funny; two, because you have less of a chance of getting in a fistfight here than at some other place, which Jamie has found over the years to be the most important aspect of successfully getting stone-cold drunk.

And right now, he’s looking forward to getting completely blotto. 

Hey, independency doesn’t come all that often to a bloke like him. 

Being one of the Ostrarchy of Junkertown’s classier establishments, the Hump has swinging doors, hardwood floors big enough for more than thirty tables, a fully stocked bar, and, best of all, _television_. The world as people knew it may have ended twenty some-odd years ago in Australia, but the rest of the planet didn’t seem to notice. Cities made out of light in India. Revolution in Brazil. More of those fucking Omnics destroying Russia.

For a group of people the Outside World portrays as irradiated, half-mad criminals—not that they’re necessarily wrong in that—Australians, and Junkers in particular, tend to be pretty politically informed.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Bates asks as their waitress sets down their first round of beers. “How no one ever talks about Australia unless it’s Sydney.” She cranes her pointy chin at one TV where a young man with a ponytail of locs is jamming on something that looks like a turntable for a screaming audience. _Live from Numbani_ , the ribbon at the bottom of the screen reads.

“Too right,” Jamie agrees. “But we can watch some dickhead playing the skin flute or whatever the hell that instrument is in some city that’s so perfect they got gold-plated taps, never mind more water than they know what to do with. Bet that concert could have paid for a new sewer system here five times over.”

He takes a swallow of his beer a bit too aggressively and coughs as some trickles down the wrong way.

“I like Lúcio,” Celia says charitably as she thumps Jamie on the back.

“Easy for you to say,” Jamie says when he’s got his air again. “You like everyone, darl.”

“It’s hard not to when he says he wants to use his music to help humanity.”

“He cares so much about humanity, maybe he should come down here and help out some humanity instead of playing to those tin cans,” Bates seethes, slapping her mug down on the table.

“Brutal, Bates.”

Celia’s problem, Jamie reminds himself for the billionth time since meeting her, really _is_ that she likes everyone. Well, maybe not everyone, because really, what Junker—or Wastelander, for that matter—likes Omnics? But she doesn’t feel burning, violent hate for the goddamn things, at least, which both puzzles the hell out of Jamie and kind of amazes him, especially when Celia’s about old enough to remember the wars. Still, it makes her endearing, so they put up with it. 

“Let’s talk other politics,” he says, trying to be the peacemaker for once. It is the first night of the rest of his life, after all.

The girls are so shocked at him saying something semi-reasonable that they do, indeed, move on to other politics. Mainly what the hell this Overwatch thing is doing now a bloody talking ape has started it up again.

“Notice how they don’t come down here, either?” Jamie asks. 

Well, he did try. And at least they’re complaining about the rest of the world now instead of Dooley Do-Right and his Magical Skin Flute. 

Half an hour becomes an hour, two beers become five, and Jamie is well on his way to being completely bombed out.

Bombed out.

He giggles at his own pun.

“Wha’?” Bates asks, her own cheeks flushed.

“Ever think about how much Australian has the word _bomb_ in it?” he asks her. 

Celia is about to reply to that, no doubt with something more eloquent than the burp she immediately excuses herself for, when the feeds on all the TVs stop and a fanfare sounds.

“Incoming message from the Ostrarch of Junkertown,” a voice says from all the TVs at once. 

Jamie’s head shoots up so fast his neck cracks, along with everyone else in the place, except for one of the waiters, who rushes to mute all the TVs but the biggest one. 

Because that’s another thing about Junkertowners. Unlike pretty much everybody else around the world, they love their leader. 

Not hard to see why, Jamie thinks as the man himself appears at his desk, when their leader looks like this. 

The People Eater’s pushing fifty if he’s not reached it already, but you’d be hard pressed to tell just by looking at him. Sure, the wild mop of hair atop the buzzed sides of his head is graying, but the face beneath it is smooth and round and very kissable.

“Fat doesn’t crack,” Celia might say with a wink.

Jamie couldn’t agree more. 

And then there’s the little matter of the fact the man not only has his tits on display through the holes in his suit, he’s also got them pierced—and doesn’t mind fiddling with one or both of the steel hoops while talking to his people. 

“Dooley,” Jamie whispers, feeling more than a bit hard. Not even the hatchet-faced man standing behind the People Eater all covered in bullets and guns and looking like he’s about to shoot anyone who so much as sneezes can kill his boner today. And Major Kalashnikov has killed plenty of his boners over the years. 

“Shh,” Bates shushes, but she’s grinning. Oh, yeah. She knows big men are better. 

“My fellow Junkertowners,” the People Eater starts in that even, classy voice that Jamie usually hates. When news anchors and suits on TV use it, they sound fake. Like they think they’re better than everyone. But when the People Eater does it…dooley, indeed. 

“I hope you are well this evening. All of you. During our war against Citadel and the forces of Colonel Joe Moore and his allies, I have asked you to make many sacrifices, and you have come through admirably time and time again, proving your strength and determination and our unity as a city-state.”

It’s funny, Jamie thinks as he takes a sip of his beer. If another politician said this, he’d give their mug a nice two-finger salute and demand that someone changed the channel. But when the People Eater says it, you know he’s sincere. That’s what he loves about the fella. 

The world could use some more goddamn sincerity.

“It is, alas, my sad duty to inform you of some recent losses in the field,” he continues. “Yesterday evening, twenty of our soldiers were slaughtered in our ongoing efforts to capture key equipment from Gas Town.”

You can tell just how shocked everyone is because no one, not even Jamie, makes the obvious fart joke here.

“Please join with me now in remembering their names.”

You can feel the entire room tense up as the People Eater starts reading off the list, even at Jamie’s table. Junkertown has a population, give or take, of about seventy thousand. Much, much smaller than even the smallest cities elsewhere in the world. Chances are, more than a few people in here are going to know at least one of those names.

Sure enough, the waitress bringing them round six drops her tray as the People Eater gets to the name Ira Gladstone and covers her mouth with a shaking hand. She stands there, staring at the screen with her mouth working like her jaw’s been busted before two other waitresses help her off the floor and into what Jamie guesses is the bar’s back room.  
He doesn’t feel bad for breathing a sigh of relief at the end of the announcement when none of the names ring any bells. Not that they would, really, anyway. The only two people in the world he gives a toss about are sitting right at this table, and neither of them are going to get drafted anytime soon, if the People Eater wants this sewer situation fixed. 

Truth is, now he’s no longer on sewer detail, he could very well get called up to the field.

He swallows that thought down with another gulp of beer. Like he’s afraid of Moore and his weird death cult. 

And, truth be told, that’s kind of the point of this job change when you get down to it. 

Well, that and blowing up all the shit you want, of course.

“My deepest sympathies to you, their families and friends, and to our city-state at large. We will not let their deaths be in vain. Make no mistake, we will not rest, we will not tire, until the Triumvirate is buried beneath the Wasteland’s shifting sands and Junkertown and our allies are free of all war, all doubt, and all loss. Good night, and God bless.”  
The transmission ends, leaving a thoroughly gloomy atmosphere in its wake. One by one, people go back to their drinking, their discussions, and their TV-watching, but the heart’s just been sucked out of the evening. 

Hell with that, though, Jamie decides. He’s come out here to have a good time, and he’ll be damned if that poxy bastard in the Gothic gas mask is gonna ruin it.

“I’d sure like to eat his people,” he says, in an attempt to both be funny and to think of something bawdy to take away the chill. From the girls’ chuckles, he’s both surprised and glad that he was moderately successful.

“You know what I like about you, Jamie?” Bates asks as she picks up her beer again. “Even in these trying times, you’re always thinking with your dick.”

“Kind of the point here, darl, what with me new job.” 

Bates raises an eyebrow, definitely shocked that he brought it up again without her prompting. “Oh?” she asks.

“Yes, Jamie,” Celia says with a cat-that-ate-the-cream smile. “What are you really going to do next?”

“Well, see, I wasn’t taking the piss when I said stripping,” he says, looking right at Bates, who rolls her eyes. “But not just any kind.”

“There’s a special kind of stripping?” Bates asks. “No. _God_. Let me guess. It involves bombs or exploding pants or something equally ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous? In Junkertown? Y’don’t say,” Jamie laughs before finishing off his beer. Five down, who knows how many to go? “Nah, nothin’ like that, mate, but you’re close. You ever been to The Bouncing Betty?”

Bates cocks her head to the side, pursing her lips as she tries to remember. “Once, maybe,” she says as Celia shakes her head, laughing.

“Too much sausage for my tastes,” Celia says. “Why? Is that where you’re auditioning first?”

“Not first, love. First and last.”

“And you know they’re gonna give you the job why, exactly?” Bates sighs, tearing a hand through her hair. “I knew it,” she says to Celia. “I knew he didn’t have a plan.”

“What?” he asks. “That’s a perfect plan! Get hired on as a stripper at the best club in the city, give the People Eater a lap dance, maybe let him fuck me, then get him to make me Junkertown’s lead demolitionist!”

The women stare at him, blink, then turn to stare at each other, almost in perfect unison.

Jamie giggles. “What?”

Bates pinches the bridge of her nose and huffs out a sigh. “Fuck, Jamie…. Where do I start? How do you even know the People Eater goes there? How do you know they’ll even hire you? How does this plan even more from A to B?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Jamie says with another laugh. “I traded a few explodeys to a few people, who called in a favor or two from a few other people, and they told them to tell me that the Betty’s one of his favorite places to visit for a lappy. As for hirin’ me, well….” He sits back and gestures up and down his body. “Who wouldn’t?”

“And if the owner hires you and you even meet the People Eater—and that’s a pretty big if already—how do you know we even have a demolitionist in this city!”

“Oh, we don’t, love, but that’s easy enough. When he sees what I can do, he’ll make the job for me.”

“And then what? You’ll just…make bombs all day? Blow up toilets every afternoon?”

“Ahh,” Jamie says, pointing a metal finger at her. “You’re tryin’na get me to admit this is crazy. It won’t work though. See, the way I figure, if we want to win this war against Joe Moore and those mugs that work for him, we need bombs. And I’m just the bloke to make ’em.” 

“You want to fight Citadel?” Celia’s voice has gone all small and cold.

“Too right,” Jamie says as the waitress fills up his mug a sixth time, then tops off Bates’s. “They don’t seem to get the idea keepin’ their hands to themselves, so maybe they will if we blow ’em off a few times.” He looks at his own hand. “Oooor maybe that’s a bad metaphor,” he drawls as he looks back to Celia.

Her indulgent smile is gone now though, and in its place is a pinched-up expression and eyes like two shuttered windows. She stands up so fast, her chair topples and slams to the floor behind her, causing a few people to glance their way.

“Celia?”

“Don’t, Jamie. Just don’t,” she says before turning and stalking out of the place.

“Wha’…I….” Blinking, Jamie glances over at Bates, who’s tossing coppers onto the table. “Did Celia just…get angry?”

“Jamie, you _ass_ ,” she snaps before hurrying out after Celia.

“What? What’d I do?” Jamie calls after her. When Bates only gives him the two-fingered salute, he shakes his head and follows.

Even with night falling and what few streetlamps there are not on just yet, it’s not hard to spot Celia lumbering through the crowds as fast as her stiff body will take her. Which means, with just a little pushing and shoving, Bates and Jamie catch up to her in no time.

“Celia, please.” When Bates tries to grab her hand, though, Celia just pushes it away and keeps on going. “He didn’t mean it like that.” The glare she shoots Jamie tells him that he better not have, if he knows what’s good for him. “His plan’s insane anyway. It isn’t going to work.”

“Oi!”

“Of course he did,” Celia snaps back. “And the worst thing is, if you go back to him right now, he won’t even understand why what he said is so incredibly fucked up.”  
Jamie blinks. Celia mad _and_ swearing in less than three minutes? _Oh, to hell with this._

“I don’t get it. What don’t I understand?” he asks as he pedals around in front of her.

Celia stops walking, and the pinched look on her face has turned into a full-on glare now. Jamie should be surprised when she shoves him in the shoulder, but he’s not.

“Oi! What the _hell_ , love! What’d I—?”

It’s then he notices the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“—do?” he finishes weakly.

“You have no idea, do you?” she asks, and now her voice has lost all its fire. It’s a broken thing, filled with glass and rocks and twisted bits of metal. 

“Uh…,” Jamie tries, prodding his index fingers together. “No,” he admits. “No, Celia. I don’t. Tell me?”

That seems to surprise both of them, and her especially. The mangled look on her face smooths out and she reaches for his flesh hand, twines her fingers through his, and leads him to the side of the street. Bates follows looking confused.

“Sit.” When she pushes lightly on his shoulders, Jamie complies, sinking down onto a pile of wooden crates that holds who knows what. “Listen,” she says. “I’m…not going to go into all of this, too much. I’m just going to explain why what you said upset me.”

Jamie nods. Really, what else can he do here?

“I’m old enough to remember the Omnic War. What it was really like,” she says softly, looking into his eyes, then looking away, like she doesn’t trust herself not to stop crying again if she starts. “All of this senseless….” She shakes her head. “No, that’s the wrong word for it. But a lot of people that didn’t have to die, did. Because they wanted to play hero.”

“That’s not why I want to f—” 

Celia holds her hand up. “I don’t know that,” she says. “And I don’t know if you know that for sure either. War isn’t fun, Jamie. It’s not like throwing explodeys at rustroaches to get a laugh or blowing up toilets to make Vries have a heart attack.”

“Well, I tried to, anyway,” Jamie quips in an attempt to lighten the mood.

She takes his face into her large hands, proving that his attempt failed miserably. “Can you tell me why you want to do this?”

Jamie nods. “You saw it on television tonight, darl. These bastards just killed twenty of our people. Does anyone care that they won’t stop until they have our water and our solar farms and whatever else they want? Nah, the world ain’t coming to save us. They’re too busy amusing themselves with fancy new buildings and concerts and…skin flutes.” Her mouth does twitch like it wants to smile at that, so he presses on. “So we’ve got to save ourselves. Look right in the eye of the fellas aiming guns at us and laugh before we blow them to hell. That’s what Junkers do.” 

“I didn’t know you were so patriotic,” Celia says, almost sounding like her old self again.

Jamie shrugs. “Oh, I dunno about that, love. Maybe I just like the ‘laughing and blowing them to hell’ part.” He moves her hands off his face and squeezes them. “No one’s going to kill me. Hell, Vries tried to for two years now, and if he didn’t succeed, no one will. Trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing.”

That gets a chuckle at last. “No you don’t,” Celia insists. “But okay.” She squeezes back.

To their right, Bates clears her throat. “Um, has anyone asked themselves yet why you can’t just go to the People Eater and ask for the job?” When they both look at her she says, “I mean, he wants to win this war, right? So why would he turn down any suggestion for help?”

They both look at him for an answer.

“Aw, come on, now,” he says, hopping off the crates. “What’d be the fun of that, right?”

And just like that, things are back to normal with Celia doing a snorting laugh and Bates rolling her eyes and asking God or the universe or maybe just the night air why she puts up with him.

“What?” he asks with a blink. “It’s a good question!”

“I am not drunk enough yet for this conversation,” Bates says, holding her hands out to them. “Let’s go back before some other drongos snap up our table, yeah?”

And hand in hand in hand, they do just that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the full monty, er, Junkrat stripping experience, cue up "Feel Good, Inc." by Gorillaz.

Terrible.

Every single one of them.

Roadhog shook his head as he poured himself another brew. So, this was it. Forty auditions and he’d narrowed it down to ten. One who had tried to bite him, one who thought this was all an Omnic plot to steal people’s precious bodily fluids (and who apparently somehow still had access to old movies and the ability to confuse the with reality), and ten of who couldn’t dance to save their arses.

Roadhog groaned and filled up a second glass before touching the first. He was going to need it.

“You the proprietor of this fine establishment?” 

Roadhog’s mask is good for many things, like protection from noxious fumes and scaring the bejeezus out of little snotnosed rustroaches that have sticky fingers and an interest   
in coppers that belong in other people’s pockets. It’s also good for making him sound menacing when he’s really just tired as fuck and wanting a hot shower and a wank before he passes out. Fucking hell, everyone who auditioned sucked arse, and deciding which of them to pick made him want to die right there.

“If you’re looking for the audition, it’s over,” the mask growls for him. “We’re closed.”

“Oh,” the kid says. Then, without missing a beat, “Roight. Well, anyhell, I’m here, you’re here, might as well make it worth both our time, eh?” 

Roadhog huffs, and the stool shrills on rusty hinges as he pivots to tell the bloke to piss off.

He immediately forgets what he was going to say.

Despite sounding like a place you’d go to stick your dipper in a honey pot, over the last eight years The Bouncing Betty has been home to dozens of boys of just about every type. Best way to keep paying arses in seats is variety. And sure, some have appealed to him more than others, but none have made him stare like this.

At first glance, the kid just shouldn’t work. All wire and bones and gristle, and—actual wire, judging by that traffic-cone-colored prosthetic arm. Patchy but clean overalls with no shirt and torn off halfway up the right leg to give a rickety peg leg freedom of motion. They’re at least two sizes too big and look like he pulled them off a corpse—Roadhog doesn’t even want to know what some of those stains are, but wondering about them keeps him from looking too hard at the kid’s angular face. Sharky smile with too-pointy cuspids, near-phosphorescent amber eyes that have more than a touch of the usual Junker madness to them, and thick, nitroglycerin-yellow hair that seems to lick his scalp like flames.

“You’re starin’, boss.” One eye winks as the kid glides forward, and how he does that on such a shaky-looking chair leg of a gam is anyone’s guess. “I’d reckon that means I’ve passed half the interview right there, so we can move on to the talent portion.” He reaches into a pocket and whips out a battered MP3 player that predates Roadhog by a good two generations, judging by its bulky looks. “Oh, I know it’s old,” he drawls, shaking the dented box, “but fiddle around with it some, and good as new! Would you _believe_ what Outsiders throw away down here these days?” He shakes his head, and that nitro-hair bounces. “Must be nice living in the Global Unbaked Zones, huh?” 

Roadhog wonders what it would feel like beneath his fingers. What that bony butt would feel like grinding against his lap.

Thankfully, the mask doesn’t give away any of these thoughts, and the boy frowns, clearly misunderstanding his silence. “It does work,” he promises, shaking the iPod as he steps closer, his gait an uneven thump-scree-thump-scree of boot and peg on the concrete floor. “Here, see? Rigged it so it’d fit in your setup—had a mate stop by to give it a glance to tell me the specs.” He gestures at the sound system on the wall next to the liquor and slides the iPod across the bar top, leaning forward as if he needs all his strength to get it to Roadhog’s fingertips—an action that has him bending in low to give Roadhog more than just a glimpse down the top of his coveralls to the tight chest beneath. 

“Mhh,” he purrs, shaking his hips. “Screen can be a bit wonky, though, so track eight oughtta do it if you don’t see anything.” 

He’s turned and pattered off to the stage before Roadhog can even close a hand around the thing. Well. So much for crushing it in his grip and showin’ the kid the door. And hell, it’s closing time on a Tuesday, he decides as he heaves himself up from the stool and makes for the sync system. Boys and staff are all out doing errands or having lives, and the apartments upstairs are all gonna be empty. So he’ll eat dinner and fall asleep after a good, hard wank a few minutes later tonight than usual.

Sirens, static, laughter, then a killer bassline and drums. The kid’s on the stage now, back to Roadhog and the empty tables, missing his ratty boot and gripping the pole with both hands, grinding against it. 

As the lyrics begin—about a broken down city and a camel’s back—he starts shaking his ass, then turns and rubs it up against the pole, up down, up down, head thrown back, lips opened in an O, and those green eyes closed as if he’s getting the world’s best blowjob.

Roadhog’s hard enough to shoot shrapnel long before the long, pink-nailed fingers of the kid’s flesh hand open the first buckle on his overalls. He switches his hips again, drags the gaping fabric aside enough to give a hint of that tight chest, the pale skin strangely blemishless for a Junkertowner that probably works in some job that involves corrosives.   
Grinning, the kid drags the fabric lower, baring just a glimpse of nipple before he yanks the cloth back up and starts to work on the next side.

Roadhog isn’t sure how long the song lasts. It feels like hours and minutes at the same time. He vaguely listens to the bass and drums pounding through his blood while his gaze eats up the show. The kid teases with the top of his overalls, winking and wriggling, then finally walks them down to his waist and leaves them there. The room isn’t exactly cold—what part of Junkertown is if it doesn’t absolutely need to be?—but they’re two hard, little pink points anyway.

How does he do that?

Kid has some nice, curvy hips that shouldn’t match such a flat, scrawny chest but manage to somehow. Roadhog barely has time to admire them, though, before the overalls are down and kicked off, showing the kid’s leg has been amputated up to midthigh. 

Of course, Roadhog nearly forgets that detail when he sees the kid’s package snugly nestled behind…a sparkly, pink G-string. Which perfectly matches the polish on his fingernails and toes. It’s not hard, which is a damn shame, but it looks impressive enough, and Roadhog catches a glimpse of balls when the boy drops to hands and knees and crawls along the tongue of the stage, raising his hips and showing off the candyfloss clinging to his tight little ass. 

As the bass and drums pound on, he sluices up the bar, vaults over it, and before Roadhog can even grunt, the kid comes to rest astride his lap, sequins and glitter pressed right up to the mountain in Roadhog’s overalls. He grinds against it, and Roadhog’s breath flutters, sputters, and dies before it can even reach his lungs.

It’s a goddamn miracle Roadhog doesn’t embarrass himself right there. 

“Hmmm,” the kid purrs as the music fades, wriggling against Roadhog’s thighs as he loops his arms around Roadhog’s broad shoulders and leans in until they’re pressed chest to chest. “I’ll be here bright and early tomorrow, then, boss.” And with a jaunty kiss to the upturned snout of Roadhog’s mask, he swivels off his lap and hops back over the bartop, giving Roadhog a nice look at the sharp curves of his butt. 

“Uh…,” Roadhog says. Which was supposed to be something about how the kid shouldn’t be a presumptuous, cocky little idiot. “We don’t open ‘til four,” he says instead. “Curtain time’s five. Be here at three.”

“Righty-o,” the boy says as he finishes sliding back into those overalls, which should really be a goddamn crime, Roadhog thinks as the kid then sits to lace his boot back up.   
“Well,” he says as he stands. “TTFN, then.”

He’s all the way to the front door before Roadhog realizes something. “Wait.”

“Hmm?” The kid turns and flashes him a shit-eating grin.

“What do I call you?” Roadhog huffs. “I like to know the names of people that blindside me.”

The kid rubs a hand through his hair as that grin gets wider. “Jamie Fawkes is the name, and strippin’s me game,” he chirps before blowing Roadhog a kiss. “Toodles!” 

As Jamie breezes out, Roadhog lumbers onto his feet again, and this time he makes sure the door is damn good and locked this time before hitting off the lights and heading   
upstairs, cursing the heat between his legs the whole way. A handie isn’t gonna be enough tonight, he can just tell.


End file.
